The Complete Poems

  Ceased, and the lamp was lit again,

  And the dumb clock ticked again,

  And the reign of peace began.

  DEATH OF THE FARMER

  ‘What ails the Master, do I think?

  Undoubtedly,’ the Ox cried, ‘drink,

  That stupefies the spirit, dims

  The reason, dulls the limbs.’

  ‘He’s done no good about the farm

  These fifteen years, but only harm.

  As well you know,’ the old Ass said,

  ‘We often wish him dead.

  ‘How hopefully at his Son’s birth

  We preached the reign of Heaven on Earth

  And sang him praises high and low.

  Ay, that was long ago!

  ‘Still, to ensure domestic peace,

  We tell the turkeys, ducks and geese:

  “He rules, omniscient and great,

  Proof-armoured against fate.”

  ‘“Granted,” we say, “he’s no more seen

  Tending fat sheep in pastures green,

  Or scattering at the break of morn

  Largesse, profuse, of corn.

  ‘“Yet, from some glorious inner room,

  He guides the cowman, steward or groom,

  And posts his ledger, page by page,

  In joy or solemn rage.

  ‘“Our feeding and our water-time,

  Our breeding and our slaughter-time,

  The dyke, the hedge, the plough, the cart –

  These thoughts lie next his heart.”

  ‘The simple birds believe it true,

  What now, poor poultry, will they do,

  Dazed to confusion, when the glum

  Gloved undertakers come,

  ‘Tilting the coffin past the pond,

  The ricks, the clamps, the yard beyond,

  Skirting the midden-heap with care,

  Then out, we know not where?’

  OVID IN DEFEAT

  The grammar of Love’s Art

  Ovid still teaches,

  Grotesque in Pontic snows

  And bearskin breeches.*

  ‘Let man be ploughshare,

  Woman his field;

  Flatter, beguile, assault,

  And she must yield.

  ‘Snatch the morning rose

  Fresh from the wayside,

  Deflower it in haste

  Ere the dew be dried.’

  Ovid instructs you how

  Neighbours’ lands to plough;

  ‘Love smacks the sweeter

  For a broken vow.’

  Follows his conclusion

  Of which the gist is

  The cold ‘post coitum

  Homo tristis’.

  Thereat despairing,

  Other Ovids hallow

  Ploughshare in rust

  And field left fallow,

  Or, since in Logic books

  Proposed they find,

  ‘Where two ride together,

  One rides behind’,

  This newer vision

  Of love’s revealed,

  Woman as the ploughshare,

  Man, her field.

  Man as the plucked flower

  Trampled in mire,

  When his unfair fair

  Has eased desire.

  One sort of error

  Being no worse than other,

  O, hug this news awhile,

  My amorous brother,

  That the wheel of Fortune

  May be turned complete,

  Conflict, domination,

  Due defeat.

  Afterwards, when you weary

  Of false analogy,

  Offending both philosophy

  And physiology,

  You shall see in woman

  Neither more nor less

  Than you yourself demand

  As your soul’s dress.

  Thought, though not man’s thought,

  Deeds, but her own,

  Art, by no comparisons

  Shaken or thrown.

  Plough then salutes plough

  And rose greets rose:

  While Ovid in toothache goes

  Stamping through old snows.

  DIVERSIONS

  TO AN EDITOR

  (A Satiric Complaint in the Old Style)

  John Cole, Esquire,

  It is my desire,

  If it be your pleasure,

  To be paid full measure*

  For the poetic fire

  And the fantastic treasure

  Which the Muses inspire:

  So much of it as I

  Committed last July

  To your mercurial eye.

  You accepted those verses

  Neither with sneers nor curses,

  But with hearty laudations,

  Jolly recommendations

  Of all my late creations.

  And I thought this strange, for you

  Never publish a review,

  Even with faint damnations,

  Of the work I now do.

  Was this a changed view?

  I would have you remember

  That poem grave and sober

  Which you printed in October

  (No, indeed, in September),

  About a Glass Palace,

  And the curious rambles

  Of a girl named Alice;

  Also Burrs and Brambles,

  How the venomous snakes

  Slide in the prickly brakes

  With cunning and malice.

  It was then my desire,

  Had it been your pleasure,

  To be paid full measure.

  I was worthy of my hire,

  John Cole, Esquire!

  But, indeed, you must remember

  How, when November

  To its close had run,

  I sent you a dun.

  (For the butcher and baker

  And candlestick-maker

  Had me on the run.)

  You sent me back fair phrases,

  Like roses and daisies,

  But of guineas not one.

  Out went November,

  In came December,

  And you printed my verse

  Of the ghostly curse,

  Blown lamp and cold ember,

  In phrase simple and terse.

  John Cole, Esquire,

  It was then my desire,

  Had it been your pleasure,

  To be paid in just measure:

  I swear I am no liar.

  Now the old year is gone,

  Spring is drawing on,

  And what season is worse

  For a poet’s purse?

  I tell you, none.

  The milkmen, the coalman,

  And the oilman, a droll man,

  Are knocking at my door

  Louder and worse and more;

  And had I the courage

  I would charge you demurrage

  On the poems yet sleeping

  In your close keeping:

  That one of the farm ditches,

  Of the straw and the fitches,

  Where the elder beasts, unweeping,

  Scorn on their god are heaping,

  And that of Ovid’s Breeches,

  With the strife that vexes

  The embattled sexes

  When arrogance itches –

  John Cole, Esquire,

  I no longer desire

  To await your pleasure,

  With ‘At your leisure!’

  Pay me now my hire!

  I hear on every part

  That you have a kind heart

  And a lofty soul,

  And passions in control;

  But though your heart be kind,

  Though your soul be wed to Art,

  Though your honour be whole,

  Does that help me to find

  My bread, meat, and coal,

  My coffee and my roll,

  My candlesticks and oil?

  No one can call me lazy,
<
br />   For I toil when I toil:

  I keep from any broil,

  I am merry and easy,

  A Johnny-pluck-the-daisy;

  But even good tempers spoil.

  Sir, though it may appear

  An easy thing to rear

  Four children on a clear

  Two hundred pounds a year,

  I think this is no reason

  Why at the present season

  You should praise my verse,

  But draw tight your purse.

  For your private commendations

  Or secret approbations

  Are scant fare to live at ease on:

  They make the case worse.

  Then John Cole, Esquire,

  If it be your pleasure,

  It is now my desire

  To be paid in full measure,

  According to my hire.

  Addressed to John Lynn Cole, Esquire, From The World’s End, Islip, Oxfordshire.

  Mr. ‘John Cole’ took the above in good part, and after a time replied with a cheque and acceptable explanations of the delays of which the poem complains.

  THE KINGFISHER’S RETURN

  A song for the children at Field Place, where Shelley was born; made to celebrate the Kingfisher’s return from being stuffed. This is a variation on a simpler version by my friend, Molly Adams.

  Long had our Kingfisher been

  Barred from his meadows green,

  From green waters running deep

  Where the dumb fish glide and sleep;

  Reeds in their ranks keep

  The banks on either side,

  Weeds divide and surge wide

  As the miller’s boat goes by;

  Kingfishers, when they die,

  To far Cloud-Cuckoo pastures fly,

  But this Kingfisher makes a home

  Where little children go and come,

  With nosegays welcoming

  The advent of their King,

  This ancient regent

  Of an excellent

  Rainbow Land.

  Join we hand in hand

  By the river strand,

  To dance for our playmate

  Till the day grows late,

  Greeting him with this song

  A long while planned.

  LOVE WITHOUT HOPE

  Love without hope, as when the young bird-catcher

  Swept off his tall hat to the Squire’s own daughter,

  So let the imprisoned larks escape and fly

  Singing about her head, as she rode by.

  TRAVELLER’S CURSE AFTER MISDIRECTION

  (from the Welsh)

  May they stumble, stage by stage

  On an endless pilgrimage,

  Dawn and dusk, mile after mile,

  At each and every step, a stile;

  At each and every stile, withal,

  May they catch their feet and fall;

  At each and every fall they take

  May a bone within them break;

  And may the bone that breaks within

  Not be, for variation’s sake,

  Now rib, now thigh, now arm, now shin,

  But always, without fail, THE NECK.

  TILLY KETTLE

  His name was Tilly Kettle,

  A painter of Joshua Reynolds’ school.

  It was he consolidated Plassey,

  It was he consolidated Plassey

  And enlarged the English Rule.

  He despised the Mughal painters.

  Their work, he avowed, was incorrect;

  Thus he consolidated Plassey,

  Thus he consolidated Plassey

  And won Lord Clive’s respect.

  He painted Rajahs and Begums,

  He asked and obtained a huge commission.

  It was he consolidated Plassey,

  It was he consolidated Plassey

  And killed a great tradition.

  Full-length Rajahs in their robes,

  He measured them both with rule and eye

  As he consolidated Plassey,

  As he consolidated Plassey

  And worked his palette dry.

  ‘Hand on hip,’ said Tilly Kettle,

  ‘And drapery in the Italian style,

  For you learned a lesson at Plassey,

  For you learned a lesson at Plassey,

  Must last you a little while.’

  He was not a Reynolds nor a Gainsborough,

  His art, he confessed, was of baser metal,

  But he consolidated Plassey,

  But he consolidated Plassey,

  And his name was Tilly Kettle.

  The conclusion of this ballad,

  Indian wit, not mine, should settle;

  But the moral, if any, of Plassey,

  But the moral, if any, of Plassey,

  Is the moral of Tilly Kettle.

  THE COLLEGE DEBATE

  ‘That this House approves the Trend of Modern Poetry.’

  (From a Letter addressed to Edith Sitwell)

  So, as I say, the Dean of Saul Hall, shuffling

  His centenarian slippered feet and snuffling

  (He attends all these debates with grim devotion),

  Spoke somewhat heatedly against the motion.

  With the same working of his Adam’s apple

  That spells ‘You sir, why were you not in Chapel?’

  He gibed at modern poets, ‘Show me one

  Knee-high in stature to a Tennyson,

  Shoe-high to a Wordsworth. No, for decadence

  Restless and mean rots the whole present tense.

  What has there been written worth a reader’s while

  These thirty years? Young coxcombs, dare you smile,

  Neglectful of those grandlier looming shapes?

  Yours is an age of pigmies, dwarfs and apes.’

  With condemnatory gesture his speech ran,

  A dangerous outburst for so frail a man.

  With snowy beard half thawed in streaks of yellow,

  The Head Librarian rose; I like the old fellow.

  He sympathized with much the Dean had said,

  Yet doubted Albion’s glory was quite dead.

  True, Hardy was no poet: to his mind,

  ‘A clumsier craftsman you could scarcely find,’

  And Housman’s gift was slight and his thought weak,

  And Doughty’s metric sense was far to seek,

  ‘Yet two grand singers,’ he said, ‘still survive:

  Watson still writes, Bridges is yet alive –

  Two perfect lyrists; but, sir, I’ll agree,

  These two removed, farewell to Poesie.’

  A junior don takes up the argument;

  He ventures, quite politely, to dissent.

  Hardy and Housman he defends, aware

  Further of Brooke, Squire, Flecker, De la Mare,

  Masefield: thus far most cordially, but then

  He has no patience with the younger men,

  This post-war group. Sassoon is crude and queer,

  And Eliot’s mad or wholly insincere,

  And Free Verse isn’t Poetry, that’s clear,

  Blunden shows promise, but he’s quite small beer,

  There’s D. H. Lawrence doesn’t write a bit well,

  While as for that fantastic…

  When they reached you, Edith, I couldn’t wait

  To hear the accustomed end of such debate,

  But I saw champions bouncing from their seats

  Prepared to justify your wickedest feats:

  First to dispose of Tennyson and his peers,

  Then pressing their attack through recent years

  To point where Watson failed, where Bridges failed,

  Hardy and Housman, one by one detailed,

  Sniping at Brooke and Masefield like as not,

  Sadly backnumbered, hardly worth their shot,

  With patronage for doting De la Mare,

  Since newer Genius dawns. Lo here! Lo there!

  On
calm days, Edith, I don’t give a curse

  For this poetic better, equal, worse,

  Not quick to side with don or head-librarian

  Or undergraduate or centenarian

  In their fixed laws of Taste (which disagree).

  I only know what poetry sorts with me

  From mood to mood, and sometimes know the reason:

  But poems alter by the clock and season

  As men do, with the same caprice as they

  Towards hate or concord. Tennyson, did they say?

  I admit he gratified his age, but blame

  The pseudo-Tennyson who outlives the same

  With greed of incense and prolonged restriction

  Of metrics, matter, ethical outlook, diction,

  And critics who compare rotten with ripe,

  The modern Alfred with his prototype,

  Holding I don’t know which in pained abhorrence

  Because he never wrote like D. H. Lawrence;

  Cursing the ’sixties for not eulogizing

  The mournful star of Hardy, then first rising.

  (Engrossed with what emasculate revision

  Of open bawdry, bold manslaughter, Vision?)

  Now Hardy’s honoured? Though I’ve not forgotten

  The Elizabethan tag, ‘Medlars when rotten

  Most fit for eating’, that’s not true of peaches

  Like Tennyson was, and though old Hardy reaches

  A hand back to his boyhood, who can claim

  That this young Hardy lives and moves, the same,

  Unshaken both in purpose and technique,

  When Swinburne droops and Browning’s phantom-weak

  And ‘Gentlemen, the bower we shrined to Tennyson

  Lies roof-wracked’ and ‘the spider is sole denizen’;*

  Who knows, this dour old Hardy whom we preach

  May rot, with us, like the most juicy peach!

  Well, that’s my calmer mood, and where’s the man

  Will not abstain from curses while he can?

  But once I start in anger to defend

  The reputation of a poet-friend,

  Yours for example, I forget all that.

  Often, indeed quite recently, I have sat

  Sceptered and orbed the absolutist throne,

  Have upped this favourite, downed that other one,

  This absolutely good, that utterly bad.

  Playing the god, what merry times I have had!

  But afterwards paid for each proud excess

  With change of heart, fatigue, mere foolishness.

  SERGEANT-MAJOR MONEY

  (1917)

  It wasn’t our battalion, but we lay alongside it,

  So the story is as true as the telling is frank.

  They hadn’t one Line-officer left, after Arras,

  Except a batty major and the Colonel, who drank.

  ‘B’ Company Commander was fresh from the Depot,